I was glad he felt that way about it. He carried a .45 automatic that wasn’t noticeable because his chest was so thick that even a hand-me-down suit wouldn’t show a bulge. I carried a gun on the same kind of frame, only it was a Super .38 loaded with Super-X cartridges that push a bullet through eleven pine boards. I had an idea we could take care of whoever wanted to play rough. So I jammed on the brakes and turned the car across the center of the street.
The other car’s tires screeched, and it stopped only a few feet short of us. I was out on the pavement by that time, and Shelton made it even faster than I did. He took one side of the car, and I took the other. We reached the other car just as the driver was slamming the gears into reverse.
“Hold it!” I snapped to the driver, and he did this, for the muzzle of a Super .38 looks as big as a cannon. Shelton on his side was doing all right — the other guy in the car seemed to be trying to shrivel down into the seat. The car was stopped now, and I asked: “All right, boys, who sent you?”
The driver gave me the silent treatment. He was a smarty, I could see at a glance. His hair was rust-colored, and his face was florid. He had a quick temper, but he was holding it in because he wanted more than anything else to be smart. He was going to make an issue of not answering me.
His pal looked too small to be in such a game. He was still shriveling down, looking terrified at the gaping muzzle of Shelton’s automatic. Fortunately there was no traffic in the side street I’d turned into. So I jerked open the door, reached inside with the Super .38 and slapped the smart guy’s temple with a back-handed blow of the slide. He went out like a light, and I dragged him out from under the wheel and shoved him unconscious into the street. Then I turned to the little, shriveling guy.
“All right, jerk, do you want some of the same?”
He began to whimper.
“Don’t hit me, Mr. Corbett! Brocky only wanted us to find out why you were asking about him!”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. Brocky who?”
The little man looked puzzled. I got it then. I was supposed to know Brocky. I said gently: “Just come with us and take us to Brocky. We’ll tell him what we want.”
The little fellow looked terrified at the thought of being dragged in before his boss, but when Shelton opened the door he got out after one gesture from the .45. Then I heard a scraping noise behind me and whirled.
At the same time I cocked the Super .38, for I’d carried it hammer-down. It’s a good thing for me that I did, for Smart Guy had risen on one elbow. Blood was streaming from his temple and getting into one eye. He was giving me no pleasant look as he tugged at something under his coat and in the region of his belt. It turned out that the something was a snub-nosed revolver.
Smart guy was mad enough to use it. I saw no reason whatever to let him take the first shot, so I put a slug through his right shoulder. The revolver rattled on the pavement as Smart Guy screamed and cursed. Then he passed out cold.
The little fellow on the other side of the car was crying like a baby. Shelton had run around to help me out and left him standing there. He suddenly realized nobody was watching him, so he sprinted away from the car. Shelton was after him in a flash and easily overtook him before he had gone sixty feet. He led him back and asked nervously: “Now what?”
“We’re lamming out of here.”
“But the guy you shot is badly hurt. He’ll bleed to death!”
“No, somebody will come running any minute. See — there’s a light on in that house over there.”
I started for the car, and Shelton dragged his little captive along with him. We got moving just as a man in a dressing robe rushed out into the street. I doused the lights so he couldn’t catch my number, and didn’t put them on until I’d turned off the street. Then I looked side-wise at the little fellow sitting between us and said: “You tell us where we’re going.”
Very meekly he named the south-side honky-tonk where Sutton had picked me up in the first place. I made it there in about twenty minutes, for there was no traffic. It was after closing hours, though, and the place looked deserted. The little fellow nevertheless insisted that Brocky was there.
“You go first,” I told him when I’d parked. “Remember that we’ll be right beside you.”
He went to a side door, and Shelton and I stood at each side. So when the door opened, we just gave the little fellow a push and followed through, gun muzzles pointing in the direction of the skinny, pasty-faced man who had opened the door.
He wasn’t much more startled than I was. He was the same guy I’d seen at the party, the man who had told me about Kay’s phone call. I turned to the little fellow, who was quivering like a sick kitten and said: “This Brocky?”
He nodded and began to cry again. Pasty-face tried to put on a bold front.
“Say, Corbett, what’s this all about?”
“You tell us.” I looked around the room. The door was a private one in what seemed to be a pretty large office for a honky-tonk. The place was empty. “You can begin,” I told Pasty-face, “by telling us your name.”
Pasty-face was trying to be pleasant. “You got me all wrong, Corbett. Don’t get any ideas just because I had the boys pick up your trail. When the barman at the Hoot Owl phoned me you was in asking for me, naturally I got curious.”
“Naturally. What did you say your name was?”
“Joe Brockley. Everybody in town just calls me Joe, but people I used to know when I lived in Cincinnati call me Brocky.”
“So you knew Sam Price in Cincinnati?” I asked.
Brockley paled. “I don’t get it, Corbett. I don’t even know Sam Price to speak to.”
“Take it easy,” I assured him. “It’s all right. I was with Sam when he talked to you on the phone. I knew your name all right — I was just curious about your being called ‘Brocky.’ ”
Brockley didn’t buy that one, but he was plainly impressed about my knowing Price had called him. So I said: “Sam even told me you were the guy that cashed the ten grand check, the one that teller said Keever cashed.”
Brockley’s eyes popped, and I saw that my shot in the dark had scored a bull’s-eye. But Brockley shook his head as if in dumb wonder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never saw no check for ten grand.”
I was satisfied I had the right man, so I didn’t argue. I looked around the office. There were cardboard cartons stacked along one wall, and when I saw the label of the printing concern on them I knew I had Brockley’s right number.
He pushed tickets.
That accounted for the size of the office and the two low-budget tough-guys he had put on my trail. They weren’t real gunsels, just punks whose regular job was pushing tickets. The tickets, of course, were the kind sold in cookie jars, five for a quarter, with prizes running from four bits to three bucks.
It’s quite a nice thing if you have a small bar and slow hours during the day. All you need to show a nice profit is a couple of drunks. They see the cookie jar sitting on the bar, and they have a quarter change which they think they’ll blow on some tickets. What’s a quarter?
So maybe they hit for fifty cents or maybe they don’t — it makes no difference. They try again, and they keep it up until the bar is cluttered up with tickets. If they were sober they’d know the odds are hopelessly against them, but they’re buzzed up, and they keep on fishing tickets out of the jar until they’re breaking big bills.
It’s a poor bar that can’t push a couple of jars a day, and that means a net profit of sixty dollars, even though the tickets cost from six to ten dollars a jar, depending on how much the fix costs.
So that was Brockley’s racket. The quivering little fellow and Smart Guy whom I’d shot were “salesmen.” Brockley saw that I was taking the whole set-up in, and he shrugged.